Old FrameMaker versions

[Syed Zaeem Hosain (Syed.Hosain@aeris.net)]

Yes! Whoever saved the files (in your case) from FrameMaker chose to use a ".doc" extension, for whatever reason. I guess they figured these were "documents"! :)

In general, the file name extension _usually_ does not mean anything to an application - I could save an Excel file with an .fm extension and it would fail to open properly in FrameMaker! Not surprising.

And, I could also save a FrameMaker document with a ".xls" extension and still open it correctly in FrameMaker, although Excel would barf trying to read it!

There are interesting exceptions to this, of course. For example, Excel can open files with different content. A file with a ".csv" extension is assumed to contain comma-delimited text. A file with a ".txt" extension containing CSV formatted info can be treated differently by Excel than the _same_ file with a ".csv" extension - this can lead to some interesting confusions.

The point is that Windows makes assumptions about which application to use to open a file based on their extension - that is their useful purpose. And applications can make assumptions about the file content based on the extension.

Also, a file ending in ".com" or ".exe" is assumed to be an executable - a FrameMaker or Word file renamed in this manner would simply fail to execute in Windows or DOS!

Z

Historical side-bar: this treatment is quite different in UNIX systems, where extensions do not have any special meaning. So, files can contain information that identify the content, thus allowing for the existence of the "file" command ... this command looks at this identifier byte in any file to tell you what the file is likely to be, although it also makes assumptions by looking at content _within_ the file (for ASCII text files for example):

# file /usr/bin/ls
/usr/bin/ls:    ELF 32-bit MSB executable SPARC Version 1, dynamically linked, stripped
# file /usr/bin/file
/usr/bin/file:  ELF 32-bit MSB executable SPARC Version 1, dynamically linked, stripped
# file /etc/hosts
/etc/hosts:     ascii text

By the way, the known identification bytes are listed in the file /etc/magic ... :)

-----Original Message-----
From: framers-bounces at lists.frameusers.com [mailto:framers-bounces at lists.frameusers.com] On Behalf Of Steve Rickaby
Sent: Wednesday, March 20, 2013 9:37 AM
To: framers at lists.frameusers.com
Subject: Old FrameMaker versions

Someone posted here recently to say that 'all their old FrameMaker files had become Word files'.

I've just had course to look at some year 2000 files in FrameMaker 4 format. These have a '.doc' extent, but open just fine in FrameMaker 7. I have no idea why they are '.doc', but this might have given rise to the confusion  in question.